The minimal detectable change of the simplified stroke rehabilitation assessment of movement measure.

OBJECTIVE To help clinicians and researchers interpret change scores of the simplified Stroke Rehabilitation Assessment of Movement measure, we estimated the minimal detectable change of the 3 subscales (including upper-limb movements, lower-limb movements, and mobility) of the measure. DESIGN AND PATIENTS The measure was tested on 102 patients with chronic stroke by a single rater twice, with a 7-14-day interval for the test-retest study, and on 54 patients with sub-acute stroke by 2 raters twice, with a 2-day interval for the inter-rater study. METHODS The minimal detectable change was calculated on the basis of standard error of measurement. Furthermore, the intraclass correlation coefficient was used to examine the agreement between test and retest and between different raters. RESULTS The minimal detectable changes were from 12.5 to 13.2 points for the 3 subscales in the test-retest study and from 16.6 to 18.5 points in the inter-rater study. The test-retest agreement and the inter-rater agreement were sufficient (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.88-0.96). CONCLUSION The minimal detectable changes of the simplified Stroke Rehabilitation Assessment of Movement measure are useful for both clinicians and researchers to determine whether the change score of an individual patient is real.